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I went thru a lot for my rank. I certainly do have good memories of the people that thought enough of me to award me that rank for the hard work and dedication that went along with it----Kenji Tomiki Shihan, Hideo Ohba Shihan, Gozo Shioda Shihan, Nishimura Shihan to name a few. You can say what you want about rank, you can get it cheap too, but if you earned it then be proud of it because your instructors deemed you worthy to have the rank or else you wouldn't have it.

In my dojo you are a white belt until you are a black belt. I kind of like it in the sense that rank is more modest. You just get a sense who is higher then who. At the same time, it is frustrating when need to talk to someone at a specific rank. You kind of have to hunt them out or know their last name to find their name on the rank board. When I took aikijitsu, I had ranks (white, yellow, green, purple, brown & black). It made it easier to see the hierarchy in the dojo and it helped motivate some people, but I also know that it caused jealousy and loss of humility as well. No reason for either of those.

Hey, nobody mentioned the testing fees. The small checks to the dojo and then the big checks to Japan.

You know cheques are almost unheard of in Japan?

The fees you pay for gradings are an interesting point though. In some countries it's more than a month's wages to register a yudansha grading. I guess one upshot is that people in those countries tend to take their training and the people who give them gradings seriously, since it affects how much food they can put on the table, even when taking into account any programmes to help poorer countries.